This blog will present news items about the motion picture business, with emphasis on lower budget, independent film in most cases. Some reviews or commentaries on specific films, with emphasis on significance (artistic or political) or comparison, are presented. Note: No one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"!

About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Monday, December 09, 2013

"An Animated Conversation with Noam Chomsky" ratifies what I know: tall men have it better

“Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?: An Animated Conversation
with Noam Chomsky”, by Michel Gondry, is a cute enough idea to make abstract philosophical
thoughts, especially from a pundit well known for (left-wing) moralizing,
filmable. Chomsky, now 85, talks, with
great articulation, and Gondry draws. It’s
rather like Salman Khan drawing to teach his lessons. Chomsky was a linguistics professor at M.I.T.

This little film deals with Chomsky’s meta-philosophy. In his mind, what makes us different from
animals is that our concept of something has to do with its permanence and not
just its physical form. He posed
questions like whether a tree grows from a seed is the same tree as its ancestor,
but it’s probably, in biological terms, to ask that question with respect to
asexual reproduction. If a flatworm is
cut in half and both halves regenerate, are both bodies the same being? We could go into the logical paradox posed by
the 1954 film (and remakes) “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. Sexual reproduction is actually biology’s
answer to entropy in thermodynamics.

What does make someone “who he is?” Chomsky says his first memory is at age 18
months (mine is at age 3 getting an electric train for Christmas). He denies the afterlife. A tragedy led to the loss of his wife, which
he doesn’t want to talk about.

The question has practical and moral consequences in
relationships, especially marriage. In
50 years, most or all of the cells of a person’s body are replaced, but he or
she is still the same person. Permanency
of an intimate relationship requires to go beyond “what we see”. The idea of fantasy comes into this
discussion.

Chomsky gives some ideas as to how man became different from
animals, and developed a cognition enabling culture to develop. It could have happened several times and
died. He says that all cognitive thinking is a kind of "talking to yourself."

Toward the end of the film Chomsky gets more specific,
saying that after World War II, some of the Allies kept some Holocaust victims
interned for some time, especially in France.
I had not heard that. He also
discussed the anti-semitism in America early in the war, including the voyage
of the “St. Louis”, depicted in the 1976 film “Voyage of the Damned”.

The title of the film is based on a grammatical paradox, but
I can say I would not want to be the tallest man in a bar. To be honest, there is an advantage in our
culture to being tall, even very tall (if male) and lean. Chomsky practically restates Mark Zuckerberg's famous retort to Diane Sawyer when still the toddler CEO, "Is that a question?" Jimmy Kimmel has even mentioned it.

Technically, much of the film is set in the old 4:3 aspect
ratio. (But so was “The Artist”.)

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